1. Field of Invention
This invention provides electronic shoppers with a virtual shopping experience by, first facilitating the creation of customer-personas and their catalog-content affinities by a sales person-representative, secondly facilitating the persona-association based configuration of customer-actors by the Shopper. Thirdly it involves the commissioning, by the Shopper, of an "on-the-desktop" computer directed sales-advisor or agent, that generates advice on catalog navigation, product applications and product function that is tuned to the proxy customer's configured personality and specific needs.
2. Background Art
It is well recognized that procurement systems have traditionally been manual, labor intensive and quite costly operations. Suppliers, for example will do mass mailings of catalogs to potential customers, the customers would browse the catalogs and select items to be purchased and then the customer would complete a paper order form, or call the supplier to order the items. The entire process, from preparing the catalog to receipt of the order, is very labor intensive and often took several weeks. If a supplier wanted to continually update his catalogs, or provide different price schedules to different customers, the printing, distribution and administrative costs would be substantial.
On a relatively small scale, some suppliers have offered catalogs through computer services, such as PRODIGY (TM). Employing PRODIGY (TM), a computer user can dial-up a service from home and select items to purchase from various catalogs maintained on the system. Upon selection, PRODIGY (TM) initiates the order with the supplier. While this has made significant improvements in typical procurement situations, there are still numerous needs remaining to be fulfilled.
Current electronic catalog systems which service the customer are generally deficient in several ways. First they are very generalized in the information they provide. These systems are not customer-centric in design. Thus they are generally product oriented and rely on sales associates to make the final sale. Additionally, they do not rely on the personalized characteristics, needs or criteria of the specific buyer in order to narrow the choices of selection to be offered to the customer. This therefore requires excess time on the part of the customer to browse through the catalog in order to make the proper selection. The current electronic catalog systems are unable to advise shoppers on catalog navigation and product features when shopping for somebody other than themselves such as gift shopping. Additionally, the current electronic catalog systems are unable to advise the customer as to those accessories that might enhance the product to be purchased. Thus current electronic catalog systems present all catalog shoppers with the same presentation format based on an internal machine organization of the catalog's content, rather than dynamically generated presentation format based on a customer's individualized personality, interests or needs. This type of internet electronic catalog business limits the merchant's ability to sell since they still do not have the tools with which to fashion target-sales strategies. As a result the current electronic catalog systems are only slightly better than human-centric, direct-marketing strategies employing time consuming and expensive sales staff. In addition current electronic catalog shopping systems are unable to determine, characteristics, personality and traits of the specific shopper for whom they must direct their sales effort.
Contemporary electronic catalog systems are typically lacking in one or more of the following areas:
1. They do not facilitate customer-centric selling procedures that use custom personalized sales advice strategies, but rather facilitate a more product-centric advertising process that relies on sales representatives to make the actual sale. PA0 2. They are unable to advise shoppers on catalog navigation, product features, product applications and product functions when they are shopping for somebody other than themselves such as gift shopping and proxy shopping. PA0 3. They present all catalog shoppers with the same presentation format based on an internal machine organization of the catalog content rather than a dynamically generated presentation format based on a customer's shopping personality and interests. PA0 4. Contemporary systems are unable to view the shopping world through the eyes of the customer.
These electronic catalog handicaps hamper their broad utilization and universal proliferation. Merchants, as a result, still have no tool with which to fashion target-sales strategies. This makes the electronic catalog a poor cousin to human-centric, direct-marketing strategies. They are also unable to incorporate cross-cultural, target-sales strategies into electronic catalogs that are accessed internationally over networks such as the world wide web. Additionally, they are unable to determine the characteristics, personality and traits of the shopper for whom they must direct their sales.